What I learned on Election Day had nothing to do with politics

A state-of-the-art 1920s Kotex ad (click to enlarge).

Being a challenger on Election Day is a real challenge.

Seasoned poll workers bring books, magazines, crosswords and other time-fillers along with them, and with good reason. The passing of the long hours between 6:00 AM and 8:00 PM can be very slow indeed, especially for primaries, where the turnout is usually lighter (though it wasn't THIS year).

One of the benefits of sitting at the Richmond Towers, though, is that we are in the community room and there is a large screen TV that is on all day long.

Now, you should know that I am NOT a TV fanatic (mostly the news and some documentaries of Kalahari predators' dining habits), but on Election Day I cannot help but catch some of what goes on.

Imagine my astonishment when I glanced up from my newspaper to see a Kotex pad with side flaps flying around like Walt Disney's 'Dumbo'!

The ladies working the tables were amused at my reaction -- they've seen it all before, day after day.

Somewhat later I was treated to a brassiere commercial for which the closing line was the wearer -- in what I can only describe as an UPLIFTING pose -- declaring 'my other brassiere will be jealous'.

But the best was yet to come: Animated stick figures with leaky bladders. I swear.

Back when China and Russia considered themselves Socialist countries, one of the things they pointed to with pride was that the masses were not bewitched by advertising into becoming mindless consumers. This was because there was NO ADVERTISING. Of course, there were no consumer goods either, but that's another story.

Americans, on the other hand, are freed from these shackles.

I'm really looking forward to my next daytime TV outing.

And hoping it's even more challenging.

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NOTE: It'll be a couple of days until I get it back and CLIPS can go out again. Sorry. :-(

-- Dan Damon